Iran has rejected direct talks with President Donald Trump over its rapidly advancing nuclear program, the Islamic Republic’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday.
After Trump sent a letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on March 7 pushing for a deal “very soon,” Pezeshkian said the Trump administration “must prove” it can be trusted before Iran could agree to direct negotiations. However, Iran’s response, delivered via the sultanate of Oman, did leave the door open for indirect negotiations, the Associated Press reported.
“We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,” Pezeshkian said in televised remarks during a Cabinet meeting. “They must prove that they can build trust.”
Trump warned that “very bad things” would follow if Iran did not agree to pare down its nuclear program, Fox News reported.
“My big preference is that we work it out with Iran, but if we don’t work it out, bad things are gonna happen to Iran,” Trump said on Friday. This comes after Trump said in February that Iran will be “obliterated” after a report said the country had sent an operative to assassinate the president.
Indirect talks with Iran have mostly stalled since Trump pulled America out of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. Amid intensifying pressure to engage with the West, Iran has projected strength via state news channels and videos of paramilitary groups flooding social media.
A video shared Friday by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard showed troops stepping on an Israeli flag, the AP reported.
“The Americans themselves know how vulnerable they are,” Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned on Friday. “If they violate Iran’s sovereignty, it will be like a spark in a gunpowder depot, setting the entire region ablaze. In such a scenario, their bases and their allies will not be safe.”
